


spark like empty lighters

by extasiswings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon compliant through 3A, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: I knew he didn’t love me, but I adored him anyway — Patti SmithOr: Derek leaves.  Stiles gets possessed.  Derek comes back.  What that all means...they'll figure it out.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 5
Kudos: 137





	spark like empty lighters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elisela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/gifts).



> Not me writing Sterek fic in 2020 after abandoning the show in S3...anyway, I don't know what this is, but I hope it's not terrible.

Derek leaves. 

After Jennifer. After the Alpha Pack. He gets into the car with his sister once again, albeit a different sister than before, and drives out of Beacon Hills fully intending to never look back.

He should have known better, he thinks some nights when he and Cora are crashing in terrible motel rooms on their way to nowhere in particular. He should have known better than to play at being an Alpha. Should have known better than to try and build a new family, a new pack, out of the ashes he and Laura left behind. Should have known not to tempt fate. The things he touches don’t tend to turn out well, after all.

Now, his pack is dead and he’s no longer an Alpha. He can take a hint. The universe or the Nemeton or whatever vengeful spirit has it out for him doesn’t want him in Beacon Hills—that’s fine. He has nothing left there to miss. 

He gets two months before his phone rings.

Scott.

_We need you._

_It’s Stiles._

_I don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know what to do._

And finally, quietly, _Please, Derek._

There’s a small part of Derek, petulant and vindictive, that wants to point out that Scott never needed him before, pushed him away and insisted he knew better, never listened, never cared, that this is what Scott _wanted_.

A larger part, the part that’s exhausted and has nothing else to give, wants to say no just because he’s never _helped_ anything by going back to Beacon Hills, he’s only ever made things worse. If there’s a problem, Scott’s still probably in a better position to fix it without him rolling in and asking fate to fuck them over once again. Derek has a track record of not fixing things, of specifically failing at being good, being right, being capable. 

But Scott says _please_ , and for maybe the first time since Derek has known him sounds like he really means it. There’s no posturing, no resentment, just...a scared kid in over his head.

And that—Derek knows what that feels like all too well. 

“You’re going back,” Cora says when he hangs up. It’s not a question, and her jaw tightens in the silence that follows.

“You don’t owe them anything,” she adds.

And that’s—not entirely true. If he thinks about Stiles, he inevitably thinks about the way they used to trade saving the other’s life back and forth like it was a game. He wasn’t ever actually keeping score, but if he had been, he’s pretty sure he owes Stiles at least one more save. 

Besides—whatever is going on in Beacon Hills, Derek’s pretty sure a bunch of teenagers don’t deserve it. 

“Maybe, but—they don’t have anyone else,” he replies.

Cora sighs. “Okay, then. Beacon Hills it is.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Derek.” She rolls her eyes. “Of course I do. Don’t be stupid.”

The chasm between the two of them seems to close just a little bit at that.

* * *

The night they go back, Derek finds Stiles on the side of the road out by the Preserve. A flash of red catches the corner of his eye and he’s pulling over onto the shoulder before he even fully registers that it’s a hoodie he sees.

“Stiles?”

The scent in the air is wrong—not different so much as...absent. Like there’s something masking Stiles’ usual aura. But between one breath and the next, it changes, returning to normal. Stiles blinks once, slowly, and then jerks, twisting to take in his surroundings.

“Stiles,” Derek repeats. Stiles freezes.

“Derek?” His breathing speeds up, frantic and shallow, and Derek closes the distance before he can think too much about it, gripping Stiles’ shoulder with one hand and his wrist with the other—grounding, stabilizing. 

He isn’t sure he’s ever seen the other boy so afraid. 

“It’s okay, Stiles. Just breathe.”

He waits until Stiles has stopped gasping to ask— “What are you doing out here?”

Stiles swallows hard. “I don’t know,” he croaks. “I was at home, I don’t—I don’t know how I got here.”

There’s blood and dirt on his hands, under his nails—what’s left of them, since they’ve mostly been bitten to the quick. Derek makes a note of that to himself, but doesn’t mention it.

“Come on,” he says instead. “I’ll drive you home.”

He squeezes Stiles’ shoulder gently and Stiles shudders, closing his eyes and nodding once.

“Yeah. Yeah, I—thanks.”

“Why are you back?” Stiles asks a few minutes later as Derek pulls back onto the main road. 

Derek can’t think of any reason to lie. “Scott called. He was worried about you.”

“You came back...because of me?” There’s something in Stiles’ voice, thoughtful and confused. Derek can feel the weight of his gaze and is grateful for the excuse of driving so that he doesn’t have to look back. “You hate it here. And you don’t even like me.”

“I don’t _dislike_ you,” Derek admits when the silence drags on longer than is strictly comfortable. And it’s true. He thinks Stiles is reckless and antagonistic and pushy, but also loyal and brave and brilliant. And _confusing_. He dislikes the way he can’t figure Stiles out, the way the other boy throws him off-balance, gets under his skin and won’t leave. He dislikes the way that he _doesn’t_ dislike Stiles as much as he would like to. It would be easier to keep him at arm’s length if he was indifferent. 

“Well, you fooled me,” Stiles replies.

“If you don’t want me here—”

“I didn’t say that.” When Derek finally chances a glance, Stiles is slumped down in the passenger seat, chewing on his lower lip and looking out the window. 

Derek clears his throat and focuses on the road again. “How bad is it?” He asks then, and Stiles sinks down further in the seat as if he could disappear if he willed it enough. 

“Didn’t Scott tell you?”

“Scott told me what he knows—that you haven’t been sleeping, that you’re jumpier than usual, that you’ve been acting weird, that you called him once in the middle of the night to come pick you up and wouldn’t explain how you got there or what you were doing. But if I know you at all, that’s far from everything.”

Stiles takes a shaky breath. His hands twist in the pockets of his hoodie. 

“Bad,” he answers finally. “I don’t—I thought it was just a side effect of the ritual we did. That the nightmares would go away eventually. But they’ve gotten worse, and then the things like tonight—I can’t _remember_ anything. I don’t know where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing—hours of time just gone and I’m—”

_Scared._

“It’ll be okay, Stiles,” Derek says. “We’ll figure it out.”

They pull up in front of Stiles’ house. The house is dark, Stiles’ jeep still parked in the driveway. Stiles swallows hard as Derek hears his pulse tick up. 

“If you say so.” He sounds exhausted.

“Stiles—”

“Thanks for the ride, Derek,” Stiles says, cutting him off and opening the door before Derek can stop him. Derek opens his mouth, but no words come. So instead, he just watches as Stiles slips inside the house. He doesn’t drive away for awhile. He tries not to think too hard about his own disquiet.

* * *

Stiles is possessed by a Nogitsune. Stiles. Perfectly ordinary, aggressively _human_ Stiles. 

They save him, but not without costs. And although Derek never had any great love for Allison Argent, that doesn’t mean he isn’t sensitive to the loss that echoes through the rest of Scott’s pack. 

Scott withdraws into himself. And Stiles—Stiles ends up spending a lot of time with Derek. 

It starts small—Stiles showing up at the loft and just sitting there in silence as he works on homework or whatever. Derek isn’t sure why. He doesn’t ask. He’s not sure Stiles would tell him if he did. But he always opens the door. 

He wonders if it’s because Stiles knows that he gets it. The way it feels to be used against your will to do terrible things. The slippery sick slide of violation that’s difficult to shake. 

Or maybe Stiles just doesn’t want to be alone. Derek gets that too. 

“You know I remember all of it now?” Stiles says one night when he calls Derek from a club at midnight and slides into Derek’s car covered in glitter and smelling like alcohol and sweat and other people. 

“Everything the Nogitsune did—everything _I_ did—that I couldn’t remember before. I remember all of it. Everyone I hurt. How powerful I felt. How much...how much I liked it.”

“It wasn’t you, Stiles,” Derek replies and Stiles huffs a bitter laugh and shakes his head.

“It was though,” he insists. “My hands. My body. I think about it all the time. I dream about it. I can’t forget.” 

“That why you’re drunk at a club on a weeknight?”

Stiles is quiet for a long moment. The air in the car sours with embarrassment and anxiety. 

“Dad’s working tonight. I just—I didn’t want to think for awhile. And I didn’t—I wanted to feel—not like this.” 

Derek doesn’t try to pretend he doesn’t know what Stiles means, pushes aside the vicious twist in his gut at the thought of Stiles being touched by strangers and stares straight ahead. 

It’s not that he’s never thought about Stiles like that before. He has. He’s noticed the shape of Stiles’ mouth, the length of his fingers, the line of his neck—flickers and flashes of desire at inconvenient moments, shoved down and away, buried as quickly as possible because Stiles deserves better than whatever Derek could give him and Derek deserves nothing as good as Stiles. Allies, he can handle. Friends. But more than that...Derek doesn’t have a clue how to handle that. 

He’s barely a functional person. Anything else—he wouldn’t know where to start.

“It’s my fault,” Stiles says quietly, breaking the silence when Derek parks in front of his house. 

“What is?”

Stiles gestures aimlessly. “Everything. All of...this. The only reason Scott was out in the woods that night was because of me. Because I wanted to have some sort of midnight adventure, like an idiot—“

“Like a normal teenager,” Derek corrects. “So you did a stupid thing—it happens. You couldn’t have expected—under any normal circumstance the most you should have needed to worry about sneaking out into the woods at night would be getting caught by your dad or tripping over something in the dark or stumbling into a patch of poison oak. Not rogue alpha werewolves.”

“Yeah, well, under any normal circumstance, when you sleep with the wrong person the most you should have to worry about is them giving you an STD, not killing your entire family, but that logic doesn’t seem to have stopped you from blaming yourself either, has it?”

The words land like a blow and Derek’s breath catches. The raw, jagged edges of that wound make him want to snarl and snap back, to flinch away and hide because they weren’t talking about him and he doesn’t talk about that anyway, but even more so because Stiles is right and Derek hates it. 

“Sorry,” Stiles sighs. “I wasn’t actually trying to be a dick.”

Derek snorts. “There’s a first.”

“I get your point though. That it doesn’t help anything or make sense to put that on myself. So I guess...if you think I shouldn’t feel guilty for Scott and I think you shouldn’t feel guilty for the fire...maybe we should try blaming Peter and the Argents for a little while and see how that works out for us?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Derek agrees, even if only to retreat somewhere safer. “Do you—do you want me to stay?”

The look Stiles gives him is unreadable. “Do you want to stay?”

It feels like a loaded question, but Stiles’ tone is light, curious.

_I want a lot of things I shouldn’t,_ Derek thinks. 

_Yes_ , is on the tip of his tongue when Stiles leans across the gearshift and kisses him. Derek’s lips part in surprise and Stiles takes the opportunity to lick into his mouth—he tastes like whiskey and smells like want and it takes all of Derek’s control to wrench back panting. 

“Stiles, I—” _I can’t. We can’t._

“I know,” Stiles says quietly, leaning back with a small, sad smile playing around his mouth. “Will you stay anyway?”

“...yes.”

They don’t kiss again. But they do fall together into Stiles’ bed, stretching out with Stiles’ back pressed firmly against Derek’s chest, until Stiles’ breathing evens out and he falls asleep. 

Derek’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he twists to grab it without disturbing Stiles.

It’s from Cora. _You coming back tonight?_

Derek looks down at Stiles’ sleeping face. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, what he feels, what he wants—or, perhaps more importantly, what he can have. What he can allow himself. 

Staying is a disaster waiting to happen. For both of them. 

Then again, so is leaving. 

He doesn’t know which one would be worse. And wrapped around Stiles now, it’s hard to figure it out.

“Stop thinking,” Stiles murmurs, clearly not quite as asleep as Derek thought. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk about it later.”

Derek types a quick response and tosses his phone aside, not strong enough to resist the pull of instinct when the rest of him is a mess of indecision. 

_Tomorrow. I’m where I need to be._


End file.
